Speechwriters Resource List

Speechwriters, Public Relations and other communications professionals need facts at their fingertips. These references have proved useful. See how they work for you.

Acronyma:
– Entries for over 450,000 acronyms and abbreviations.
Amazon.com:
– I really like the ‘Search Inside this Book’ feature that let’s you read a good amount of many books they sell.
Business Name and Tag Line Generator:
– When you want to sex up that speech title or key phrase.
Case Studies Library:
– A wonderful source of material for stories. Such as this gem:
Mark Bridges pondered his position as manager of his family’s business in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. His duties included calming a family of campers, whose campsite had just been ransacked by a mischievous black bear… There are a dozen ways to open a speech with this story alone.
Comparitech: deep web search engines for academic and scholarly research:
– A comprehensive guide to searching the 95% of the web not indexed by Google
Cutter Consortium:
– REGISTRATION REQUIRED. These materials give you “Access to the Experts” – internationally recognized experts committed to delivering top-level, critical, and objective advice from Cutter’s 10 Practice Areas.
Directory of Open Access Journals:
– This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages. There are now 2090 journals in the directory. Currently, 567 journals are searchable at article level. As of today, 90686 articles are included in the DOAJ service.
Factiva:
– REGISTRATION REQUIRED. Superior online searching of hundreds of newspapers, journals, etc. Gives access to subscription-only services such as Financial Times and WSJ.
Google News Alerts:
– Sign up for custom searches in the daily news. Hint: Grab output as an RSS feed into bloglines.com or feedster.com.
Hoovers:
– SUBSCRIPTION REQUIRED. Access complete company information. Check out Hoover’s Business Boneyard.
Highwire Press:
– Stanford University hosts the largest repository of free, full-text, peer-reviewed content, with 919 journals and 1,213,881 free, full-text articles online. With our partner publishers, we produce 73 of the 200 most-frequently-cited journals.
Idioms:
– Investigate the origins of idioms — for all you Doubting Thomas’s.
102 Idioms:
102 Common English Idioms with meaning and examples.
Knovel Library:
– Hardcore science facts. Where else would you find the ‘RFID Handbook’?
LibrarySpot.com:
– Links to lots of stuff. The Ask An Expert service looks interesting.
National Business Journals:
– The national bizjournals site features local business news from around the nation, updated throughout the day, top business stories from American City’s print editions, industry-specific news from more than 40 industries, advice columns, and a full menu of tools to help business owners and operators manage their businesses more successfully. There’s also easy navigation to each of the 42 local business sites. Characterized among the “Best of the Web” by Forbes magazine, bizjournals’ archives contain more than 750,000 business news articles published since 1996. E-mail offerings include daily local business updates from any bizjournals market, as well as weekly updates of industry news from throughout the country.
Newslink.org:
– Another way to keep your eyes on breaking news from Silicon Valley to the Sahara.
New Words:
– A Sampling of 100 new words added to Webster’s Dictionary in 2005: amuse-bouche, bikini wax…and more.
NoodleTools:
– How to correctly cite all this great stuff you’ve dug up.
OEDILF:
– The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form. 24,000+ limericks and going strong. Here’s one:
When writing a speech to impress,
Don’t bungle and leave off an “s.”
You’ll learn what “harass” is
With talk about asses
When that’s not what you meant to assess.

Online University – Directory of Scholarly Journals:
A list that contains resources that are available online, in part or in full, though some do require payment for downloads. “Open” journals aim to provide all their resources online and may be a great place for some research, though more professionally minded assignments should start with more critically acclaimed publications.
Refdesk:
– Since 1995, Refdesk is a free and family-friendly web site that indexes and reviews quality, credible, and current web-based resources.
How to Cite Online Sources:
– The correct way to cite online sources.
Storytelling:
– Audiences always connect with stories that fit the climate, culture and mission of your business issue without losing the spirit of the message.
WayBackMachine:
– Images, Audio and Text. Browse through 55 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago.The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.
Wikipedia:
– Best source of information on the web. Check out Shakespeare or Roy Harper or Bill Gates to prove it.
If you know of any other useful reference material please leave a comment below!

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[…] 54 Reference Tools for Savvy Speakers ( I have a draft posted already) […]

[…] Thinking back to my previous post on a Speechwriters Resource List made me realize that, while there are a ton of great reference materials available for speechwriters (and speakers), a Savvy Speechwriter also needs to know how to use search tools. […]

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